Liquid Metal: Blurring the Hardware/Software Boundary
David F. Bacon
IBM Research
Abstract:
The goal of the Liquid Metal project is to allow a heterogeneous
system of conventional processors and reconfigurable hardware (FPGAs)
to be programmed in a single language with transparent, dynamic
execution across the aggregate computing resources -- to "JIT the
hardware". Achieving this goal requires significant innovation
across the entire system: language design, compiler technology,
hardware synthesis, the run-time system, and hardware protocols. I
will give an overview of the Liquid Metal language and the tool chain
we have built, present some initial results, and describe challenges
for the future.
About the Speaker:
David F. Bacon is a Research Staff Member at IBM's T.J. Watson
Research Center. He leads the Metronome project which which
pioneered hard real-time garbage collection, opening the use of
high-level languages like Java for time-critical systems in financial
trading, aerospace, defense, video gaming, and telecommunications.
Dr. Bacon's algorithms are included in most compilers and run-time
systems for modern object-oriented languages, and his work on Thin
Locks was selected as one of the most influential contributions in
the 20 years of the Programming Language Design and Implementation
(PLDI) conference. His recent work focuses on high-level real-time
programming, embedded systems, programming language design, and
reconfigurable hardware. He received his Ph.D. in computer science
from the University of California, Berkeley and his A.B. from
Columbia University. He holds 7 patents and has served on numerous
program committees including POPL, OOPSLA, ECOOP, LCTES, and EMSOFT.
He is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, Distinguished
Scientist of the ACM, and is on the governing boards of ACM SIGPLAN
and SIGBED.